Cyber days replace snow days at Mount Saint Mary Academy

The Mount campus may have been blanketed with snow earlier this week, but it did not stop students from learning.

Like many students throughout the tri-state area, students at Mount Saint Mary Academy in Watchung have received several phone calls over the past several weeks notifying them that bad weather has resulted in the closing of school. Rather than going back to sleep on what might be viewed by some as another day off, Mount students have opened their tablet computers and gotten to work.

Despite multiple snow days since the start of 2014, classroom instruction has continued in earnest. Mount faculty have employed the latest technology to ensure that while snow prevents their students from making it to class, they do not have to stop learning.

Though the snow day message from Mount Directress Sister Lisa Gambacorto may vary slightly, it always ends the same way. “Students must check Moodle for subject area assignments and teacher instruction.”

Moodle is the web-based course management system used by Mount teachers to post assignments on a regular basis and it has been an integral part of class instruction during the recent bad weather. Students log onto their class’ homepages and view their instructions for the day. While teachers have the basic ability to post assignments and documents for their students to access, they have also employed more creative uses of the technology to offer direct instruction, answer questions, and lead discussions.

“The technology allows us to deliver content in various ways to support learning,” said Technology and Media Studies Department Chair Joan Mruk. “This gives students access to faculty and a rich array of resources. It also provides them with experience in asynchronous learning, an activity they are likely to encounter after high school.”

Teachers have gone about the process of instructing remotely in many creative ways. While the Moodle homepage is always the starting point so students have a consistent location from which they can obtain their instructions, teachers utilize a multitude of platforms to ensure students receive the most extensive, subject-specific instruction. Faculty members have hosted live discussions through Moodle. They have initiated online forums and blogs where students can post responses to their teachers and to each other. Others have created podcasts and narrated animated PowerPoints. Some use Google Apps with its document-sharing ability to allow students to collaborate on projects.

“The benefit of a one-to-one environment is that students have all the tools they need to complete projects and continue to receive instruction,” said Director of Technology Carolynn Parisi, “even though they are physically away from school.”

Remote instruction is made possible largely because of the vast technological infrastructure already part of the Mount curriculum and a culture which embraces technological innovation. In fact, the “cyber day” has been in place at the Mount since 2010, the first full year of school-wide one-to-one computing.